Ok, I admit it. As a maker of fire, I suck.

Practicing my survival skills in the comfort of my home as a good little preparedness-er, I decided to see if I could get an ember "borrowed" from the fireplace to ignite a cotton ball (both with and without Vaseline).

Both smoked and smoldered like the dickens and charred as I cupped it and blew on it just like I've watched Les do on Survivorman.

What am I doing wrong?

I can get the Vaseline cotton ball (VCB) to catch fairly easily with my fire steel, but if I'm going to try this with an ember produced by a fire-bow or similar, I'm in for a cold wet night.

The cotton ball of course ignited and burned up almost instantly when tossed frustratedly into the fire itself so that shoots the "fire retardant" theory.

Small fire needs small tinder. Make sure you fluff up that cotton ball before adding fire to it, with or without Vaseline. Practice. . .

Too tightly packed?
Too much vaseline?
Too much air and you were blowing it out?

And the real kicker- was it a cotton ball, or a white polyester fluff ball?

Thanks for the feedback from both.

I was wondering if I hadn't fluffed them up enough or maybe didn't have real cotton.

I went back and double checked and the bag said "100% cotton" so that eliminated that possibility.

I had made several (about 6) attempts both plain and with just a little Vaseline (didn't want to overwhelm and smother the little ember).

Had it fluffed up enough that it actually burned it's way through the fluff ball a couple of times as I was blowing on it.

Funny thing is now when I go to work tomorrow my thumb/index and 2nd fingertips are now yellowed as if I had been smoking a joint. (I work on a med-psych unit where we do a lot of detox). I'm sure I'm going to get some funny looks from my eagle-eyed coworkers.

Once I tell them where the yellow stains came from, they will have an easier time believing that I was trying to start a fire with cotton balls than smoking a joint...

I was trying to do it with as small an ember as I could manage because in the field I suspect that is all I'm going to be lucky enough to get. I did try with a large (1/4 inch long) ember just to see if size does matter. (It didn't).

Practice, practice, practice....

Another possibility with an ember is that you might have it too open. It might not be able to get "critical mass", it isn't dense enough for the fire to become self sustaining. *shrugs*

Yeah, each time it looked like it was just about to catch (smoking like a fiend and even the cotton fibers glowing red) but it just couldn't make over the edge and ignite.

I'll keep playing with it with different materials until I get it, then I'll move on to learn how to make an ember with a bow-drill.

My experience with cotton balls and flint and steel is, they suck at turning an ember into a flame. They'll light but they're much more miss then hit. What I found to be a far superior material is jute twine. The cheap brown stuff that doesn't make particularly good cordage. A short piece, unraveled and bunched up catches with barely any work at all. Don't know why cotton has such a hard time igniting. I suspect the fibers are too fine, but that's not even a hypothesis.

This is a great post and I hope more people get involved in the answers. I am often in my backyard trying to catch tinder of all types on fire. The cotton ball one has vexed me before as well and not one I would prefer to have as my only option.

At what temperature does vaseline catch fire? Maybe you need a hotter fire source?

Perhaps I misunderstood the scenario. I thought the challenge was using a vaseline-soaked cottonball with a small ember like you would create with a hand-drill or bow-drill friction fire survival technique.